


Welcome to Your Life

by themorninglark



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, Ronan figuring out his Adam feelings, Ronan/Noah friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't remember how I met Noah," said Ronan, "because there's nothing there to remember. Fuck, it's not like I forgot - "</p><p>"I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying any of us did. Just that - one minute, we didn't know him, and the next - we always had."</p><p>And Ronan saw Adam clench one gentle fist on the doorstep, long, delicate fingers curling inwards, pressed tight against the grit-stained palm of his helplessness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to Your Life

**Author's Note:**

> Noah doesn't get enough love. Ronan and Noah's friendship is one of my favourite things in the books. Adam/Ronan is one of my favourite things in life. This fic was the result. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> (I listened to Lorde's amazing, spine-tingling cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" a lot while writing this, and the title comes from the song too, as does much of the mood.)

When Ronan met Noah, it was five in the afternoon and the wind was at his back, biting chills into the jagged edge of his spine.

He'd sat on the hood of his car, watched the sun start to set and downed two bottles of beer before he'd worked himself up to this moment. To kicking the door open, and looking in at Gansey's space, _their_ space, now; to breathing in deeply and feeling the rush of something familiar, going straight to his head. The smell of mint wafted faintly on the breeze.

Gansey was out. Ronan had made sure to come when Gansey was out. He didn't want Gansey to know how much, or how little, he'd brought with him from The Barns.

He was standing in the doorway now, and he'd just dropped a lamp on his foot.

"Fuck," he swore.

He bent down, wrapped his fingers round the cold, sturdy metal.

" _Ouch_ ," he heard, from above him. If it hadn't sounded so soft, so hesitant, he would've thought it was the distorted echo of his own voice, coming back to haunt him.

Ronan's gaze flicked upwards, met a pale apparition with hair like fine straw, hands in pockets.

"That looked painful," said Noah.

"If you think so, then stop standing there and help me move my crap in," said Ronan.

"Sure," said Noah, and walked round him towards the BMW.

Ronan hefted the lamp into his arms. It was heavy, heavier than it seemed; it was an old, rusting thing that he'd bought from a garage sale in suburban Henrietta, and he had picked it up in a hurry on his way to Gansey's because he had not brought his own lamp from home.

 _Not home._ The thought slashed savagely across his mind. _Not anymore._

"You don't have a lot of stuff," Noah remarked, peering into the open boot of the car.

"No," said Ronan, tersely. "I don't."

"Neither do I," said Noah, and shot him a smile. Like the sun vanishing behind a cloud of grey, it flashed across his face briefly, brightly, and then it was gone.

If Ronan hadn't known better, he might have thought he'd imagined it; but for one, the alcohol high was kicking in and the world pulsed with a sharp, unnatural clarity, and for another, he knew a thing or two about imagined things.

"Where do you want this?" asked Noah, lifting an unmarked cardboard box into his arms.

Ronan shrugged. "Wherever. The room next to yours, if you're going to carry it for me."

"Okay," said Noah, and smiled again.

 

* * *

 

When Adam asked him about it months later, it eluded Ronan's grasp; slid out of the twisting shackles of his mind like smoke in the sultry night.

"You can't remember," said Adam, quietly.

"Yeah," said Ronan, and then, as Chainsaw dug her claws into his arm and croaked a plaintive cry skywards, into the face of the stars, "no."

"Yes or no, Ronan?"

Adam's voice bled calm, tingled coolly on Ronan's skin.

"I don't remember how I met Noah," said Ronan, "because there's nothing there to remember. Fuck, it's not like I _forgot_ \- "

"I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying any of us did. Just that - one minute, we didn't know him, and the next - we always had."

And Ronan saw Adam clench one gentle fist on the doorstep, long, delicate fingers curling inwards, pressed tight against the grit-stained palm of his helplessness.

Ronan thought of calling for Noah. The words rose to the back of his throat, burning like bile. He did not call. He knew that if he did, Noah would not come; or, worse, he'd appear and disappear again, like a breath of wind across their threshold. Chilling. Insubstantial.

All the hairs on Ronan's skin stood on end, but then he thought: it's just Noah.

Still, he did not call.

Instead, he said, "Well, Parrish, who the fuck cares? Noah's one of _us_ now. It doesn't matter how he got here."

He stood up, crumpled his beer can with one hand and tossed it on the ground.

He felt Adam's thoughtful eyes on him as he turned and walked back indoors. Unwavering.

 

* * *

 

Gansey rubbed at the furrows in his brow, sighed tiredly and propped his elbows on the table, clasping his hands in a wordless prayer.

"Ronan," he said. "Don't."

Ronan's lip curled.

"I didn't say anything," he said.

"You don't have to. It's just that _skulking_ thing you're doing."

"Don't you mean that _sulking_ thing?" murmured Noah, from the corner of the kitchen.

Ronan shot him a look, laced with venom. "Where the fuck did _you_ come from?"

Noah shrugged. "I was always here."

And Gansey smiled at him, wry and resigned.

He was wearing his glasses, papers spread out on the kitchen counter because it was one of the few clean surfaces remaining to him; he was squinting at a bit of writing on a map, and nonchalantly, he said, "Adam's really good at Latin. You know that."

"I'm good at Latin," said Ronan.

"See? You have so much in common already."

Ronan, parched, swallowed his rising fire, felt his tongue run rough over the roof of his mouth. He couldn't stand to look at Gansey like this, so he looked at Noah instead.

Noah held up his hands in a vague gesture of surrender, like _hey, leave me out of this_.

And Ronan scowled, turned on his heel and stalked out of the kitchen. He could hear Noah's quiet footsteps behind him. He did not turn to see if Gansey was watching them leave.

The air in Monmouth Manufacturing felt stifling, suddenly; outside, the sky was a brilliant, bruising purple, blooming into the fullness of its tortured heartache, and dusk coiled around Ronan like a silent predator.

He threw open the front door.

Noah, by his side, said, "Don't go."

"Yeah? _Make_ me stay," snarled Ronan.

Noah laid a cold hand on his arm.

"If you go," he said, "I'm coming with you."

 

* * *

 

And he did.

It was the first time, and the last, until Ronan dreamt the keys to the Camaro and tore himself apart searching for his perdition, his savage truth in the belly of the night.

Noah stayed with him. He sat very still, knuckles turning white, as Ronan screeched down the tarmac and sparked blinding dust in his wake, in Joseph Kavinsky's leering, dangerous eyes.

"I think Kavinsky has a crush on you," was all Noah had to say, as the dark crept to its zenith.

Ronan bit off the curse that rose to the tip of his tongue, turned, for a second, to stare at Noah, the picture of pale serenity. He seemed unreal then, profiled in the passenger seat of the BMW; he seemed like an unnatural transplant into a place where he didn't belong, and yet, the expression he wore was calm.

"But you don't like him," Noah continued.

" _Fuck_ no," said Ronan.

"You don't like Adam either, do you?"

"What does Gansey's stray have to do with anything?"

"Ronan," Noah murmured.

His voice was soft, tender as the way his fingers wrapped round themselves, a little anxious, fidgeting - but always, always gentle -

"Why does Gansey have to bring in someone new?" asked Ronan, aloud. "Aren't we enough? _Aren't we,_ Noah?"

"I think Gansey's the sort of guy who has enough love for _all_ of us," said Noah, pensively.

"Great for him," Ronan muttered. " _I_ sure as hell don't."

"Hmm…"

Noah's lips parted, for an instant, and Ronan waited for the rest of his words to come, but they never did. He pressed them back together instead, let out a low, contemplative hum that seemed to echo off the roof of the BMW.

Their silence suited Ronan fine. He hit the accelerator, seared his tracks into the trail they left behind, all the way till morning's cruel dawn.

 

* * *

 

Ronan understood, even if he didn't want to; felt his desperation ring hollow in the yawning cavity of his chest, and flung wishes like careless coins down that deep, unending well. His stomach clenched nastily when he looked at them together, Adam's dusty hair bent next to Gansey's.

He understood what Gansey saw in Adam Parrish, because he _knew_ Gansey. Every bit of his bleeding heart and his furious ideals beating down like the August sun. Gansey, who chose his closest friends from the scrap heap of Aglionby, of Henrietta; who plucked them from nothing and told them that they _mattered_.

He understood, too, that Gansey did not see everything. There were some things that stayed secret even in the light.

The marks on Adam's skin - he tried to hide them, beneath layers of threadbare clothing - but Ronan's eyes, sharp as a knife, peeled away the armour Adam wore, and -

_inevitably - like calling to like -_

It took a certain kind of person to barricade themselves from the world, with a strength borne of pain, with a fierce, angry pride that stung like needles, and Gansey was not that kind.

"Adam. You have to leave," he'd said, gripping the fabric of his rolled-up sleeve. Horrified. And confident, so confident.

"Move in with us."

Ronan could have torn the next words from Adam's thin lips, seconds before they fell. He knew, as Gansey would not, _could_ not, what they would be.

"No," said Adam, whipping his arm back and striding out of Monmouth Manufacturing.

Ronan uncrossed his arms, let a sardonic smirk cut across his face. "Way to go, _Dick_."

"You've pissed him off good," added Noah, perched atop the sofa.

And as the door slammed, loudly, Ronan exchanged a look with Noah. Noah gave him the smallest of shrugs, hopped off the sofa and walked away, presumably to his room.

"What did I do?" asked Gansey, turning to stare at Ronan.

"Nothing. Let him piss off," said Ronan.

Gansey's gaze turned reproachful. Ronan ignored it.

He didn't say Adam would be back. He knew he would, and so did Noah, because Noah saw more than he let on. Gansey would realise it when the time came.

And Ronan had come to know Adam in his own way, a way that eluded Gansey; if Gansey was celestial and Ronan, a twisted thing from some circle of Hell yet unnamed, Adam was shaped of _terra firma_. They were drawn into the gravity of each other's earthbound orbit, and if there was something ugly in their lives, it was real for both of them.

Adam, he knew, felt this too, even as they both pretended they were better than they were. For Gansey's sake.

Yet, there would be times - times when Gansey wasn't looking, and their eyes met as equals -

And Ronan would shiver, perfect in his self-denial.

 

* * *

 

The first time Ronan dreamed of Adam, he was lying in a bed of roses.

The thorns scratched at his back, but he was made of fire, and he let the sensation seep through his bloodless veins. The tattoo winding up his body sprang to quivering life at the touch of each pointed pinprick. His mouth gaped in a soundless cry.

His eyes blinked open. Adam stood above him.

He did not hold his chapped hands out. He kept them by his side, curled lightly into fists, staring down at Ronan. _Unwavering._

He did not fear the flame. His eyes shone, brilliant blue, like ice - melting, _shimmering_ , in the heat -

Ronan sat up.

He woke with a single soft, scarlet petal in the heart of his palm, heavy metal still blasting from his battered radio, and the sound of scrabbling footsteps outside his door.

"I can hear you," he said, not bothering to raise his voice.

Noah pushed the door open. Half of him sidled in quietly. The other half remained in the corridor.

"Your music's really loud," said Noah.

Ronan reached out and turned down the volume dial.

Noah lingered. "Were you having a bad dream? I heard you tossing and turning."

If Gansey had asked, Ronan might have tried to brush it off and ask him out for a drive instead; if it had been Adam, Ronan would've curved his lips in a double-edged smile, cocked an eyebrow at him and thrown the question back at him, wordlessly: _Were you? Is that why you're awake, too?_

But it was Noah, dark circles casting a shadow below his eyes and that ever-present smudge dusting his sallow cheekbone, so Ronan answered.

"Not _bad_ ," he said. "Just. Vivid, I guess."

"Why does your room smell like roses?"

"Who the fuck knows," muttered Ronan, lying back down on his bed.

Noah crossed his room to turn off the radio. Ronan, eyes closed, allowed the intrusion.

He slipped the petal into his pillowcase, careful not to crush it between his fingers.

 

* * *

 

On the first Sunday after Gansey and Blue found Noah's bones, half-covered with dirt in that deserted wood, Ronan stayed at home and drunk himself into a stupor. He turned off his phone, locked his door and ignored the faint snatches he could hear of Adam and Blue's voices in the living room.

On the second Sunday, Ronan went back to church.

He went alone, and he seized at the solitude like a lifeline. He did not speak to Declan or Matthew. They knelt beside each other, united in their worship as the song of the organ rang out, soared up to the rafters in praise.

Ronan's prayers came easily to his lips, the confessions easier still.

Repentance -

That was the hard part.

He was a dreamer rudely awakened, and the world seemed too bright everywhere else, but here, in the sanctuary of St Agnes, he looked up at the cross and let his eyes open. There was a familiar kind of comfort in the solid, old wood that enshrined his faith. Here was something that had not changed through the years, that had not been wrenched away from him like everything else; here was the altar of enduring constancy and his ironclad belief that some things transcended even death.

_Lord, I commend Noah's soul to you - God -_

His palms were sweating. He clasped them tighter, still.

As the congregation rose, seating themselves back down on their pews, Ronan saw Matthew shift sideways almost unconsciously, saw - impossibly, in between them -

No, not a ghost. Not a memory either. A _boy_ , real and clutching at the edge of the bench with his knobbly fingers.

Ronan stared.

"Hi," Noah whispered, smiling shyly.

"The fuck? I've never seen you here before," hissed Ronan, under his breath.

"You never invited me in," said Noah. "Until now."

 

* * *

 

And Ronan's lullaby was a gospel, a dark hymn to destruction, and rebirth -

Rebirth, that he dared to imagine because he had Gansey.

Destruction, that he could master because he had Adam.

And the strains of a lullaby to sing him to sleep, into dreams, because he had Noah to wake him up if he started dying.

 

* * *

 

"Sorry I'm late," said Adam.

He slid into the booth next to Ronan. He'd cleaned up well, after his work. He always did. He was careful, Adam was, when he was with them; careful to look as Aglionby as he possibly could, careful to look like he was one of the boys.

"You smell like car grease," said Ronan.

"Shut up, Lynch," said Adam.

Not that it was a bad thing, Ronan wanted to add. Not that it was a bad thing at all, because there wasn't much in the world that turned Ronan on more than the sweet, rumbling purr of an engine and that smell, the smell of late nights and diesel and what it meant to be _alive_ \- in his own way, on his own terms -

Adam, of all people, would understand that.

Ronan smothered the thought, returned his attention to the pizza in his hands.

"Are you guys in a fight?" Gansey asked, pleasantly. "Oh - hey - hello, Jane."

Ronan turned. Blue had come up to their table just after Adam had arrived, and was standing at his corner, notepad and pencil in hand.

"Hi," she said. "Hi, Adam. What can I get you?"

"Hey, Blue. Just - iced tea for today. Thank you."

Ronan watched Gansey's features flicker into frustration, watched, as in the blink of a moment, they rearranged themselves into studied impartiality, because Adam would not allow Gansey to pay for his dinner, and Gansey and Blue both knew it.

When Blue had returned to the kitchen, and Gansey had gone to the washroom, Ronan dumped the remainder of his pizza on Adam's plate.

"It's got fucking olives and I hate them," he said.

It was true. Ronan hated olives.

"Why'd you order it in the first place, then?"

"I didn't. Noah did."

"Yep," said Noah, without missing a beat. "I wanted to see what it would be like. You know, to order something I used to love. Turns out, it kind of sucks when I can't eat it."

Adam narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Ronan. Ronan returned his gaze, steady.

Wiping his elegant fingers on his napkin, Adam picked up the pizza, and took a bite.

 

* * *

 

The concealments of Ronan's second secret came undone with a frightening kind of beauty, a fragility beyond human voice, like the stars coming out at night.

He spoke it, to the Orphan Girl.

_Why do you hate you?_

_I don't._

And in that moment, the first lock broke.

He spoke it, to himself, and he broke the second in the dark of his mind.

He held it close still. Not for fear, but because he didn't know how to do anything else; he was all barbs and swear words and his touch burned, left singe marks that didn't wash off.

But as Ronan dreamed, woke, and dreamed again, walked amongst worlds framed in terror and hope, he thought -

Maybe, one day, he'd find that part of him again that he'd poured into Matthew once upon a time. The part that knew how to love more gently.

 

* * *

 

"Ronan?" Noah whispered anxiously, looking ghostlier than usual by the moonlight.

Ronan, sleepless, had come out because Chainsaw was squawking her head off in the confines of his bedroom; he leaned against the window of his car now, watching her spiral up into the velvet blue sky.

"What?" Ronan asked.

"Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"Because," said Noah. "Kavinsky."

 _Fuck Kavinsky_ , Ronan wanted to say, and nearly did; but time, in its inexorable way, had passed, and the heat of his righteous fury had died down to smouldering embers, and what remained was not hatred. Perhaps it had never been hatred, with Kavinsky.

It was - pity.

So Ronan settled for a muttered oath instead. "He was fucked up."

"Yeah," said Noah.

He looked at Ronan, patient, like he was waiting for him to go on. Noah was good at silences.

"I think," said Ronan, "that's what scared me the most about him. That he was _so_ fucked up, and still - there was something he saw in me, like - like I could have _been_ him, if not for Gansey, if not for - "

"But in the end, you didn't choose Kavinsky," said Noah, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

His silhouette seemed to shimmer, then; grow a little more solid in the night.

"No. I didn't," said Ronan.

" _That's_ what matters, Ronan. He asked you. You could have. But you didn't. Because you have something else… and someone else."

Ronan shot him a piercing look. Noah, smudgy and boyish as ever, bit his lip as he aimed the toe of his shoe at a stone by his feet, and gave it an experimental kick. It bounced down the pavement, landing in the gravel with a dull _thunk_ next to the Camaro's front wheel.

His expression betrayed nothing. Ronan knew anyway.

"Yeah," said Ronan, acidly. "I've got you, asshole."

"Oh, come _on_ , Ronan - "

"Shut up. When did you get so philosophical?" asked Ronan.

"I don't go to school. I have a lot of spare time to think," said Noah wryly.

Above them, Chainsaw started to circle down out of the sky. Ronan, whistling, held out his arm, and she landed quietly, nipping the sharp _kerah_ off in the curve of her beak as she dug her talons into his leather jacket.

Noah reached out to stroke her head. She nuzzled at his fingertips, cawing softly, and Ronan drank in the oddly tender sight of his dream and his ghost together; thought, if there was anyone he'd want standing by him while all the walls of his secrets came tumbling down -

_Yeah, might as well be Noah._

"Don't tell him," Ronan said, casually.

And Noah smiled to himself like he was telling a joke, a joke that only he understood for now.

"I'm dead," he said. "Not stupid."

 


End file.
